


eruption of stars

by dolorife



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Don't copy to another site, Gen, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Not Canon Compliant - Movie 2: Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, Regulus Black Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:35:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23237050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dolorife/pseuds/dolorife
Summary: He is Regulus Arcturus Black, recently made the Lord of his House. He is a Death Eater, a follower of the Dark Lord Voldemort. And he is a traitor – to his father, who died a handful of months after Regulus’s graduation but is still present as a silent, stoic figure looming in the back of Regulus’s mind; to his mother, who only truly comes alive nowadays when she’s telling Regulus how proud she is of him for going into the Dark Lord’s service or, increasingly often, hissing vitriol about muggles, mudbloods, and squibs; but, most of all, Regulus is now a traitor to the Dark Lord himself.And yet. . . .He is also Credence Barebone.
Relationships: Regulus Black & Credence Barebone, Regulus Black & Kreacher, Tina Goldstein/Newt Scamander
Comments: 12
Kudos: 70





	1. remade, bit by bit

The last thing Credence remembers before he wakes is being surrounded by witches. Bright lights had shot out of their wands to ravage the already frayed edges of him, and the assault hadn’t stopped until he became enfolded so tightly within his own darkness that there was no light left to hurt him.

Now – awake – he is cold and wet and still scared.

Credence is used to being cold, and he’s spent his whole life scared—those things don't bother him. It’s the wet that slides wrongly against his skin, that causes his lungs to fill with water when he tries to breathe, that makes his chest hurt. His eyes, he thinks, might be greying out along the edges, but it's impossible to tell when it’s not only water he’s being submerged in: the darkness he created and collapsed into has followed him here, wherever here is.

This is what drowning feels like, Credence realizes, thoughts slow and water-logged. Perhaps his limbs should be fighting to find air, to live, in the same way his lungs are, but surely Credence is already dead. He remembers Ma’s stories, the ones about how witches would be hung or burned or drowned as punishment for their devilry.

Drowning must be Credence’s punishment.

He’s almost willing to accept this as his fate, too. Part of him is even urging him to give in, that this is for the best, that he will face a far crueller suffering if he survives—except there are hands touching him, holding him down and dragging him deeper. They are strong, these hands. They lock around his wrists and forearms, his calves and ankles, his biceps and thighs and stomach.

It feels like worms are writhing under his skin, like he’s rubbing his palms against rough brick, or like the burning slap of Ma scoring lashes into him with his own belt. He seizes up in the clammy grip, then he thrashes, fear and desperation finally cutting through his muddied thoughts, but he’s being held too tightly to break free now.

The hands everywhere—

—slither under his clothes

dig bruises into his skin—

—sharp nails gouge red trails

across his face

his cheeks—

—fingers tangle in his hair and

yank—

The panic chokes worse than the water, releases a tremor that breaks up the foundation Credence’s restraint is built on, until suddenly he can’t control it, can’t control himself, so he just . . . stops.

Falls apart.

Dissolves.

He becomes a storm of black sand and smoke. His sense of touch dulls mercifully, so he hardly feels it when the streams and particles of himself slip through the grasping fingers. He tears through the water, through those hands and their connecting bodies, and the dark waters churn with him.

He makes himself big, spreading thin until he takes up every inch of the space, and he rises. Higher and higher, past the cold, still torsos that used to be attached to the hands that restrained him, now torn limbless. They follow his rise, but slower. Floating towards a surface Credence is fighting to reach.

When he does reach the water’s surface, he doesn’t inhale so much as soak in the air. He has no eyes to see—and yet he does see. He sees the eerie green light, a beacon in what he now knows to be a dark, dank cavern. The light comes from a tall basin on an island in the middle of the cavern’s wide lake. He sees the rickety boat parked at the island, swaying back and forth, looking ready to sink. The bodies breach the lake’s surface, bloodless, bloated. Their hair is lank, stringy, and the green light casts a sickly glow upon their skin. The sight of them and their dismembered limbs bobbing in the water is a nightmare Credence didn’t know he had.

Credence finds the break in the cavern’s uneven rock walls and rushes blindly towards it, desperate to get away, though he doesn’t know where he wants to go. He bursts out of the cave as an undulating mass of darkness. What awaits him, thank the Lord, is a wide-open night sky.

The moon is a bright, smiling crescent. Its shine is caught and reflected by the ocean, and there is complete silence besides the crash of waves against the rough cliffside Credence emerged from.

Slowly, all the dust motes of Credence’s body congregate together. His flesh body is remade, bit by bit, until he is left on his hands and knees. His lungs stutter, then he’s coughing, spitting, hacking up all the water he breathed in. It comes out his nose and burns worse than his leaking eyes. He vomits food he doesn’t remember eating.

Finally, after it feels like he’s wrung all the liquid out of his body, Credence collapses completely. He takes in a shuddering breath, face pressed against stone, then lets it out. He breathes in and out until he regains a tenuous control of himself, until he stops coming apart at the seams, until he finds the strength to get his arms under him and push. Credence sits up, hugs his arms to his chest, and his legs rest, askew, in front of him. He tries to contain his shivering.

Now that Credence isn’t drowning or panicking, he’s clear-headed enough to wonder, _Where am I?_

The answer comes to him swifter than the question had, as if he already knew but had forgotten: he’s in England.

 _Why am I here?_ Credence wonders next.

The answer comes to him even quicker this time, accompanied with a surge of emotion too tangled for Credence to parse – it is triumph and disgust, it is terror and not a small amount of shame. He is here for a cursed object, one of significance, that is in the form of a locket. He had to retrieve it – retrieve it and then destroy it. But he didn’t destroy it . . . he couldn’t, not before the Inferi ( _Inferi?_ Oh, the reanimated dead) came and dragged him beneath the lake.

_Where is the locket now?_

Credence isn’t sure what to make of his own feelings of agitation or the sagging relief that nearly overtakes him when he remembers a creature, small and wrinkly with large, bat-like ears and eyes like two yellow moons set into its face. A house-elf. Kreacher. Loyal to Credence above all, even Mother ( _not Ma?_ No . . . but similar enough), there is no one Credence trusts more than Kreacher.

 _How did I get here?_ Well, that’s easy. Kreacher brought him here. But he was in New York—?

A sharp pain spikes through Credence’s head, making him wince. He’s confused. He knows all the answers to his questions, but they don’t make any sense. Now he’s stuck here, at the bottom of a cliff’s edge, sopping wet and more than half-drowned, with nowhere to go.

How is he supposed to—? Ah, of course.

“Kreacher,” Credence says.

A _CRACK_ and there Kreacher is, just as Credence pictured, except for the fact that he is sobbing into the pillowcase he wears as clothing. “Master Regulus is not d-d-d-dead? Master Regulus c-c-called for poor Kreacher?”

“Yes,” Credence says without thinking. He thinks he should be unnerved to be referred to by another name, never mind being called ‘Master,’ but instead he feels revelation. He remembers now what he had forgotten at some point in the cave.

He is Regulus Arcturus Black, recently made the Lord of his House. He is a Death Eater, a follower of the Dark Lord Voldemort. And he is a traitor – to his father, who died a handful of months after Regulus’s graduation but is still present as a silent, stoic figure looming in the back of Regulus’s mind; to his mother, who only truly comes alive nowadays when she’s telling Regulus how proud she is of him for going into the Dark Lord’s service or, increasingly often, hissing vitriol about muggles, mudbloods, and squibs; but, most of all, Regulus is now a traitor to the Dark Lord himself.

And yet. . . .

He is also Credence Barebone. He feels like Credence in the way his flesh vibrates against his bones, trying to tear itself away in strips to escape; or in the way his shoulders are hunched over and aching, even though the only being close to him for kilometers is Kreacher, who would never hurt him; or in the way he can look at his hands and not recognise his ownership of them, but when he covers his ears and traces the thoughts in his head, his mind is comforting, familiar, and safe.

Pain shoots through his head again, lingering this time. He closes his eyes and digs the heels of his palms into them until all he can see is the eruption of stars.

“Master Regulus?”

“Yes,” he answers, forcing himself to drop his hands and look at Kreacher, though he can’t quite bring himself to meet Kreacher’s eyes.

“Would Master Regulus be wanting to go home now?” Kreacher asks, wringing his pillowcase anxiously.

The thought of seeing Ma makes his palms itch. The thought of seeing Mother makes him feel . . . ashamed, though he’s not sure if it’s her he’s ashamed of or himself.

Ma is dead though. Dead and gone because he killed her. Even if she was alive, she would be in America. He’s in England. He’s safe—from her. Mother, though . . . she never leaves the house. She haunts the halls now, a ghost clothed in flesh, screeching and weeping and mad. He’s had to soundproof his room to sleep through the night. He’s never done well with noise and, more than anything, it is the longing for silence, especially of his own making, that forms his answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tumblr](https://dolorife.tumblr.com/)


	2. burnt like brands

Kreacher teleports – Apparates – them directly into Credence’s – Regulus’s – bedroom. He tidies up a bit, fussing with a wrinkle in the comforter while Credence stands uselessly in the middle of the room. He’s hunched over, clasping his elbows, face downturned. When Kreacher is satisfied with the bed he turns to look upon Credence. Perhaps he’s looking for approval. Perhaps he’s making sure Credence is still there. Whatever his intentions, they are derailed when he sees Credence still in his sopping cloak.

“Master will be catching sick if he is being in his wet clothes,” Kreacher says, almost in admonishment if not for his nervous, fluttering hands.

Credence blinks, slow. Ducks his head and begins fiddling with his buttons.

There is a huff before Kreacher declares he will be running “Master Regulus” a bath. Credence looks up in time to see him disappear with a low pop. Not long after, the sound of running water sneaks through the cracks of the en-suite bathroom’s closed door.

Credence manages to unbutton and remove his cloak. It slips through his numbed fingers to slop wetly upon the plush carpeted floor. Credence starts to bend down to pick it up but stops, one outstretched arm held in suspension: the dark fabric, pooled and placid, casts his mind back to the aerial view he got of the black lake in the cavern. His imagination takes hold of his mind and, for a moment, Credence thinks another hand will emerge, the fabric falling around it like ripples in a pond, to clasp his own. The image clings, and the only movement he finds himself capable of is the slow recoiling of his hand to lay it over his heart, where every beat he feels on his ribs expands in an echo against his palm.

“The bath is almost being ready for yous, Master Regulus,” Kreacher beckons, drawing Credence away from his own thoughts.

The en-suite’s bathtub is a huge, luxurious thing. It is clawfooted, the feet an untarnished bronze and shaped like a hippogriff’s forelegs, and a bright white porcelain. The water is so clear that Credence can make out the individual grains of pale purple bath salts Kreacher had added; it is this, as well as the heat he can feel wafting upwards to graze his cheekbones, which convinces Credence to shed his reservations along with his clothes and settle into the tub.

His toes burn when they touch the water. The hairs on his arms stand erect like two stark forests filled with trees of black bark, bare of anything else, and he shivers only once at the temperature change, full-body, before he sinks down until the warm water laps at his chin. Numbness fades: his wounds, however superficial, begin to smart. The pain is more tolerable than its disquieting absence.

Every breath is filled with floral scented steam that settles, lazy and heady, at the back of Credence’s throat and leaves an aftertaste of spring. Credence steeps, knots of tension in his back slowly uncoiling. The heat seeps into him, turning his lungs, his thoughts, and his eyelids leaden. He is near sleep when Kreacher makes his presence known again by squeezing a cold dollop of shampoo directly on Credence’s head and proceeding to massage it into his scalp.

“Master Regulus can’t be stewing in the bath all night long and not be getting clean,” Kreacher grumbles, seemingly unconcerned with how stiff Credence goes as soon as Kreacher touches him, how wide his eyes have gone. How shallow his breaths.

He knows better, of course: Kreacher doesn’t miss much, especially when it concerns Credence. When it concerns Regulus. Kreacher is attentive and smart and good—a good house-elf and a good friend both. He must know Credence is somehow changed, different than he was before, and . . . scared. Of everything.

But he doesn’t say anything. He just tries to provide comfort in his own way, like taking it upon himself to wash Credence’s hair because he knows it makes Regulus smile whenever he does something of his own volition, without orders guiding his hands. Sure enough, Credence can feel a smile rearranging his face into something softer, kinder. Happier. And, slowly, Credence relaxes and allows himself to lean into the familiar, spindly fingers of his best friend and simply enjoy the novelty of someone taking care of him.

It’s so different from the rough hands of Ma, from the conditions that always came with Mr Graves’s care, from the remote regard of Father or the violent changeability of Mother. Credence almost falls asleep again while the conditioner is setting in.

When he’s clean and dressed in the soft, loose pyjamas Kreacher brings him, Credence finds himself standing in the middle of his bedroom. He’s alone, Kreacher popping off after insisting he make Credence something warm to eat “so Master Regulus will not be getting sick,” and he’s unsure what to do with himself.

This is his room, just as he remembers it: the divot in the middle of his bed, moulded to his body, that he falls into every night; the corners of the carpet in his closet he pulled loose when he was thirteen, exposing the wooden floors boards he later pried back to create a hidden cranny for all his secret treasures; the crest and motto, Tourjours Pur, of the Black family on the wall above his bed that, from his very earliest memories, Regulus can remember Father painting by hand. And then, beneath the crest and motto are the newspaper cuttings of the Dark Lord, more of them old than new but all serving to make Credence sick when he catches sight of them.

So, he looks away.

The room is so big, where Credence is used to small. So green, when Credence is used to grey. And so magical, from the moving vines and snakes twined together in the wallpaper pattern to the spiralled turrets on the four-poster bed smoothed with the dark, impossibly rich varnish. Credence wants to embrace it all and be embraced in return.

What he finds himself most drawn to, however, is the wand he spies on the side-table next to his bed. Kreacher must have placed it there after extracting it from Credence’s clothes—or, more likely, from the wet cloak that has mysteriously vanished from where it was left to soak into the carpet. The wand has an irresistible pull on Credence from the moment he sees it laying there, eleven and a half inches of pale beech wood hiding a phoenix feather core. He remembers what he was told when he first got it:

“Remarkably flexible,” Mr Ollivander, a foremost wand crafter, had said to eleven-year-old Regulus after placing the wand in his grasp, a mere month before Regulus was set to begin his first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. “And,” Mr Ollivander had continued, “requiring a wielder of equal flexibility, in mind as well as in magic.”

He reaches out and—stops.

In his eagerness, he hadn’t seen the object tangled up with his wand: the gold chain of strong, square interlocking links holding an equally gold locket inlaid with glittering green stones placed in a serpentine pattern. This locket is what Regulus risked his life to steal. This locket is the reason his life is fragile even now, far away from the dark cavern, because if the fake that Regulus replaced the real locket with is ever discovered, Regulus will be hunted, tortured, and killed, all without mercy. This is the Horcrux of Lord Voldemort.

Regulus reaches out again and doesn’t hesitate this time. With one hand he picks up his wand and with the other he picks up the Horcrux. He stares at the locket and thinks about how this cheap piece of jewellery represents and contains a portion of a soul. He thinks about the ingredients necessary to facilitate the splitting of a soul, all barbaric but the worst of them being the act of cold-blooded murder required for the ritual.

He thinks about the fact that one murder wasn’t enough for Voldemort in the name of his Horcrux.

To test the defences for this depraved piece of magic, Voldemort thought little of asking for the use of one of his followers’ house-elves. Thought little of abandoning the house-elf to die after making him drink that foul potion filled with despair—a despair Regulus now knows intimately, because that potion must be drunk from the basin it rests in to reach the Horcrux protected beneath and Regulus refused to make Kreacher drink it as Voldemort did.

Voldemort had thought little of Kreacher’s life—just as Regulus, nearly eighteen and recently out of Hogwarts, had been too eager to prove his worth, to succeed in the first task the Dark Lord set before him, to think anything of giving Kreacher over for Voldemort’s use.

Looking at the locket swaying slowly from its chain, a pendulum with death in either direction it swings, he feels like he did in the cavern: like he could come apart at the seams from the force of his emotions. Except, this time, he doesn’t feel scared. This time all he feels is rage.

Credence could tear this room apart and take the house down for good measure. He could snuff the life out of every person in close enough proximity to him, going beyond Mother and Kreacher to engulf the whole neighbourhood. And the thought, though horrifying for the carnage he would wreak, is tempting for the brief taste of power he remembers getting when he finally stood up to Ma. When he finally stopped her.

Instead, Regulus’s eyes latch onto the collage of newspaper cuttings again, the grip he has on his wand tightening until his flesh turns bloodless, and in a single, violent motion he jabs the tip of his wand at the collage. He watches, motionless, as fire catches their corners and travels inwards until the collage is reduced to an ugly black stain on the wall, along with the better half of the inscribed Toujours Pur above it.

Regulus drops his wand and the accursed locket back onto the side-table with a clatter. He can’t help but reach over to trace the ruined words that represent one of the few meaningful memories he has of his father. And yet, even as his fingers come away dirtied with soot, he doesn’t feel any regret. Instead he is relieved, or satisfied, or maybe something else entirely and he simply lacks the words to articulate it.

Whatever he’s feeling, it’s strong enough to overcome any flash of grief or residual sentiment. The feeling lingers, just as Regulus had in his bath. Even when Kreacher arrives, laden with food and letting out a scandalised gasp as he sees the damage, the feeling stays.

“Leave it as it is,” Regulus says.

Kreacher, appalled, looks ready to re-wallpaper the whole room.

“I like it,” Regulus says. Tries to explain.

It reminds him a little of the family tapestry, which depicts the Black family tree from as far back as the Middle Ages. Upon branches gleaming with golden thread, there hangs a likeness of every Black family member like an oddly-shaped fruit with their name inscribed beneath. For every intact likeness, however, there is one blasted off for crimes, ranging from deadly serious to seriously petty, that were judged unpalatable to the family.

It’s the disfigured parts of the tapestry that make the connection in Regulus’s mind—though the images of the tapestry’s deliberate imperfections are always in the back of his mind, burnt like brands on the backs of his eyelids. He sees them every time he blinks.

It reminds him of Sirius, his older brother who was disinherited years ago; Regulus hasn’t seen him in at least a year, even in passing, and hasn’t spoken to him in much, much longer. It reminds him of his cousin Andromeda, who is never spoken of anymore because she fell in love with a muggleborn wizard and had the gall to marry him. It reminds him of the aunt or uncle who was made nameless, as if they had never existed, and who Regulus can barely make out the twin peaks of the ‘M’ that begins their name through their blotted existence on the family tapestry.

It is Voldemort, Regulus thinks, who truly deserves to be blasted, to be erased, to be reduced to nothing. Not anyone else.

“Food for yous,” Kreacher says, reluctantly looking away from the wall to place a tray on Regulus’s desk.

On the tray is a great heap of warm scones, various jams and jellies, an assortment of biscuits, a generous helping of the strawberry trifle leftover from dinner, and a mug of tea beside a little china teapot. All in all, the bounty would not look out of place at a small tea party and would likely feed every guest on its own. Looking at it, Regulus becomes aware of how ravenous he is, as if he hadn’t eaten in years.

He takes a seat at his desk chair and tucks in. He is peripherally aware of Kreacher hovering over him for a moment, and is just as aware when Kreacher leaves (likely off to bed), but is much more devoted to slathering several his scones in thick layers of lemon curd, marmalade, and blackberry jam, and taking gulps of milky tea between bites. The trifle, sweet and smooth and covered in fresh strawberries, is consumed in truly prodigious time. Regulus is left licking the spoon.

Once he’s comfortably full, just nibbling on biscuits dipped in jam and sipping his third cup of tea, Credence pushes the tray off to the side and lets his eyes wander over the other objects laid out on the desk. There’s some parchment, which feels dry and a little unpleasant when he touches it; a quill resting beside an inkwell and still dyed black at the tip; and many, many books.

It’s the books that catch Credence’s curiosity, even though, as soon as he looks at them, he remembers their contents almost word-for-word. His curiosity comes from the part of himself that grew up with the Holy Bible on his bedside table and nothing else, that wasn’t allowed to waste his time visiting a library when he could be handing out fliers, and that is still able to look at anything magical with fresh and wondrous eyes. And these books, every last one of them from potions to history, are undoubtedly magical.

Between sips of tea that sit warm in his stomach, like a cat curling up in a patch of sunlight, Credence flips through the books. Besides potions and history there are books on defence, charms, transfiguration – it seems there is at least one book on every subject of magic and Credence both can’t get though it fast enough and can’t slow down enough to savour it. It is everything Credence begged Mr Graves for – everything and more, because Credence can recall learning about all of these subjects in a school full of witches and wizards, in a castle where he was one of many and unafraid—at least, not of himself, not of magic and damnation, and not of punishment because of magic.

Then he gets to a book entitled Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and, as he is flipping past entire sections dedicated to griffons and nundus, nifflers and thunderbirds, dragons and erumpents, something catches his eye. A picture of the author, placed at the very back of the book, that depicts a man somewhere between sixty and ninety (hard as it is to pinpoint the ages of witches and wizards). The age which is apparent in the lines framing the man’s face, the crow’s feet dug deep into the outer edges of his eyes, and the predominant white of his hair throws Credence, but not enough to mask the familiarity he feels when he looks at this man.

Credence remembers this man: the way his voice echoed in the nearly-deserted subway tunnel, gentle as he talked Credence down from one of his fits; the inward curve of his shoulders that Credence saw when he laid true eyes on the man and not the all-encompassing half-sight he has when he’s reduced to smoke and vapour and violence, which made Credence feel as if he was staring into an imperfect mirror; and the here-and-gone flicker of eyes that, even as a moving photograph, hardly dare to meet those of the viewer.

It had been easy to start trusting this man, easier even than it had been to trust Mr Graves in the beginning—and in the end.

It hits him, looking at this aged man who is one of the few people who tried to help instead of harm him in the chaos preceding the death he experienced before waking up underwater in a dark cavern, that he is very far away from anything associated with ‘Credence.’ What he feels at this conscious realization . . . it isn’t grief and it isn’t sadness and it isn’t anger. It’s a hesitant, uncertain loss. He is more than sixty years beyond anything he remembers as Credence, and he can never go back.

There’s no reason for Credence to want to go back—and he doesn’t, not really. What he wants is . . . for things to sometimes feel familiar-and-foreign and not always foreign-and-familiar. He doesn’t want Credence’s memories to always be an afterthought to Regulus’s.

Credence looks back down at the man he knows, revelling in his familiarity and Regulus’s unfamiliarity. He traces the name – NEWT SCAMANDER – embossed beneath the man’s picture and knows exactly what he plans on doing next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tumblr](https://dolorife.tumblr.com/)


	3. safe harbor

Newton Artemis Fido Scamander did not get out of bed this morning expecting a ghost to come knocking at his door.

For one, he remembers being assured by the realtor, when he and Tina had purchased their New York home many years ago, that there were no ghosts or ghouls in any residence for miles, and certainly none were reported to lurk on this particular property. For two, if a ghost were to wander its way to Newt’s door, it would not be _this_ ghost, not after such a stretch of time between death and after-death has passed. And for three, well, ghosts are insubstantial: they do not possess the ability to knock on doors.

Yet here stands Newt – in tartan pyjamas and his favourite jumper, a pair of worn slippers he and Tina both staunchly claim ownership to on his feet, and a mug of tea in hand – face-to-face with the impossible.

Because there, on the front stoop of Newt and Tina’s home, stands Credence Barebone.

He is instantly recognizable, despite the many years it has been since Newt last laid eyes on the young man, for his is a face that has never stopped haunting Newt, just like the little Sudanese girl. It’s something in the steep valleys that swoop down from his sharp cheekbones to his gaunt looking, nearly meatless cheeks that has refused to leave Newt’s mind even after decades. It’s something in the way he still hunches as if trying to make himself as small as possible—though perhaps the reality is not as pronounced as Newt’s memory has taken liberties exaggerating over the years. He doesn’t look a day over eighteen.

Eighteen. The age he was when he died—or, appeared to have died.

He is not completely unchanged, however. One immediate difference is how much better dressed Credence is now than he was in the ’twenties. His shoes appear to be a reasonable size for his stature and have been shined with enough dedication to catch and reflect sunlight, his trousers are not thinned at the knees to near translucence, and his shirt is a pristine white instead of a dull maybe-white-maybe-grey.

What is perhaps most jarring is his hair, for the style of it had stayed in Newt’s mind as a sort of defining feature of Credence. Before, Credence’s hair had been shorn short at the neck, the length only getting slightly more generous as it moved to the crown of his head, except for the straight, severe bangs that cut across his forehead and further emphasised the stark lines of his face. The Credence in front of him has long hair, ending a fair few inches past his shoulders, which possesses a gentle curl that softens his face—a face marred by a concerning number of pink and thin newly-healed scars that go from temple to jaw, through the eyebrow, across the bridge of the nose, and more.

The impossible apparition speaks: “Mr Scamander?”

Newt’s mouth parts. He tries to summon his voice but, as usual, he is robbed of even his most paltry words when he needs them most. All he can think is: Since when does Credence have a British accent?

“You are Mr Newt Scamander, aren’t you?” says the apparition. “The man from the subway.”

Newt’s mug shatters on the ground when it finally slips through his lax fingers.

The apparition jumps, skittish, and darts uncertain eyes between Newt, the broken mug, and back again. There is a familiar fear in those eyes, the kind that grips the throat and steals not the breath but the voice. Seeing this fear in another, Newt’s own throat and mind are restored to some semblance of working order.

“I think you’d better come inside,” he says, in the same voice he had used in the American Tube station an entire lifetime ago.

* * *

Eleven days on a steamship bound from Southampton to New York had given Regulus ample time to question his mad plan, but it is only now, sitting at Newt Scamander’s dining table while the man himself makes a Floo-call for reinforcements while pretending to be making tea, that Regulus feels regret break out over his body like a cold sweat.

He wishes, now, that it had taken even longer than eleven days from the morning after he had almost been swept away by Inferi to now, so he would have had more time to change his mind.

As it is, he may as well have taken an aeroplane, which would have been much faster—except he had never been on an aeroplane before, as Credence or Regulus. He had never been on a ship before, either, but it had somehow seemed less daunting at the time to be sailing across water than to be trapped in a large metal tube hurtling itself and its passengers from one continent to another.

Only, he found upon taking his first steps on his chosen vessel that his legs were not of the sea. He felt the unbalancing of his feet; tasted the sourness of his roiling stomach; and, looking over the railing, saw how the waves, edged with white foam, nipped at the sides of the ship like the jaws of a rabid, hungry dog—and beyond that, the unfathomable depths, dark and cold, inciting memories Regulus would rather forget. For the first time in his life, he rued that he wasn’t a little more daring: an aeroplane is about as far from the sea as one can get!

That had been the first of his eleven-day voyage.

For the remaining ten days, Credence hid in his confined cabin quarters, trapped in the shadowed corners of his mind and put there by his surroundings. There was no relief, not even in sleep, where he dreamt of water and of wind whipping straight through him like a vengeful ghost. Then there were the unremembered dreams that woke him up in the middle of the night, shaking and gasping, held together only through force of will.

And always, whether Regulus was asleep or awake, there was the fear that, despite precautions, despite travelling through muggle means, he was being pursued by the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters. That they found out he was leaving Britain, deduced he was deserting, and were coming to kill him—though not before torturing him, long and drawn-out, until, by the end, very little of him would be left to die.

The anticipation of arriving at his destination brought him no relief, either. The more time passed, the more foolish Credence felt: he had thought no further than his vague plan to find Newt Scamander. Credence questioned why he thought going to a man he met once in a subway sixty-plus years ago, only minutes before Credence died, was the right course of action. Many times, he had almost called for Kreacher to Apparate him back to Grimmauld Place. But then he would remember Regulus’s betrayal—to his family, friends, and all their beliefs. He knew, as Regulus, he had nobody left to go to, whether it be for help, advice, or safe harbor.

The consequence for Regulus’s one act of defiance was the severance of every human connection he had. Exploring the frayed ends of Credence’s own connections was not just a choice, then, but an act of desperation.

“Here we are,” Mr Scamander says when he returns. His words are slightly garbled: his wand is held between his teeth, his hands occupied carrying a tea tray.

He sets his burden down on the table, takes a seat opposite Credence, and extracts his wand to tap it against the little red teapot on the tray. The pot rises and neatly pours two cups, one for Credence and one for Mr Scamander.

“Dress it however you like,” Mr Scamander says as he plucks a cup and saucer from the tray, adds two sugars. Milk. Credence mimics him.

In the middle of the tray there is a plate of little sandwich cookies filled with a red jam. He eyes them for a long moment, then places two on his saucer and another in his mouth—whole. The jam is strawberry.

Mr Scamander is staring. Credence flushes, chews quickly and swallows hard, almost chokes.

“Sorry,” he rasps, then gulps down some tea.

“No, no, it’s—I’m glad you like them,” says Mr Scamander. “Queenie – do you know Queenie? No? I could have sworn—oh, that’s right, you two weren’t able to meet before you. . . . Well.”

“Mr Scamander—”

“Call me Newt. If – you would like.”

Regulus chews the inside of his cheek but, after a moment, inclines his head. “Alright,” he says.

Newt looks at him expectantly, but Regulus can’t remember what he was going to say and so says nothing. An awkward pause expands in the room, becoming prolonged and uncomfortable. Regulus shoves another cookie in his mouth and slouches over his tea. He taps his ankle against his valise to reassure himself that it, and its contents, still sit just where he had put it down.

Regulus takes a deep breath. “I apologise if I’m disrupting you. I know I wasn’t . . . expected.”

“Oh no – that is, yes, your arrival is quite . . . quite unexpected, but it’s no bother. It was about time I took a break from tending to my creatures – Tina’s always saying that I overwork myself – so your timing is really quite good.”

“. . . Good.”

They catch each others’ eyes for just a second, before they whip their heads in different directions. Newt studies the grain of the table as if he had never seen it before while Regulus stares up at the ceiling and prays for the death that was denied him. Then he shudders. No, even this painfully awkward interaction is preferable to _that_.

When the opening of the front door is heard, it’s a relief to them both.

Newt jumps to his feet, saying, “Ah, Tina’s home!”

“Newt?” a woman’s voice calls with some urgency.

“In the dining room!”

And there she is.

Her hair has become dominated by slate grey rather than the brown he remembers. The style of it is different, longer but pulled back in a way that makes her eyes huge in her round face. Her clothes are smart. Professional, as if just returning home from work. Credence can’t say whether or not her clothing is greatly different from how she was dressed the last time he saw her: fashion isn’t something he has paid special attention to, ever, and he knows now that wizards and witches often wear clothes that are out of date even within their own community. Still, there is something about her that strikes Credence as being timeless no matter what. He thinks perhaps it is her kindness, which is just as bright in her face as the day she defended him from Ma. The first to do so. The only.

Credence came to New York to see who he thought was the last person alive that he knew before his death. He did not expect to find two, and yet—

His chair screeches as he stands.

“Ms Goldstein,” he says, unearthing the name.

He wonders for a moment if she could hear him – he hardly heard himself – and if so then what it was she heard. Was it the ghost of Credence Barebone, fresh from a grave his body was never buried in? Or did she hear the stranger in him: Regulus Black, lord, Death Eater, traitor? Whatever she hears – Credence or Regulus or their voices stitched together by a shaking hand – it must be good.

It must be good, because she smiles at him.

“Credence,” she says. “Oh, I couldn’t believe it when Newt told me. I can’t believe it even now, and I’m looking right at you!” She laughs, incredulous and awed and—happy. To see him.

She comes nearer to him, and he finds himself accommodating her. He steps around the table so there is nothing to impede her path and when she raises her hands he does not flinch. Instead, he bends closer. Her palms are very warm and dry against his cheeks.

“Thank God,” she murmurs, fervent. “Thank God you’re alive.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tumblr](https://dolorife.tumblr.com/)


	4. stay

Even when you are born into a world of miracles, as Ms Goldstein (“Please, call me Tina.”) and Newt were, there is still a desire, when one such miracle appears before you, to deconstruct and reconstruct it until it fits neatly into your worldview. A miracle must not defy understanding; when something is beyond understanding, it becomes scary, dangerous, threatening. It becomes something to be destroyed.

It’s only natural that the first question posed, once amazement began to fade, is: How is this (a gesture, encapsulating Credence) possible?

One of Credence’s hands reaches down to grip the handle of his valise. The other clenches around the knee of one of his trouser legs. The fabric gathers, crumples, then slackens as he forcibly relaxes his fist; the fabric doesn’t straighten out again on its own, or even when he smooths it down with the heel of his palm. The impression of creases, like scars, remain. He wishes they hadn’t asked a question he couldn’t answer.

“I don’t know,” he says.

Newt and Tina exchange a look.

“What do you know?” Tina asks. It is not said unkindly, but Regulus’s knuckles still whiten around his valise’s handle.

Regulus left England the morning after the cave. He had woken up with a surety of purpose that was soon to erode under the buffeting waves of his journey at sea but that, at the time, lent him a frenzied energy and nearly saw him trying to pack his entire life to take with him. Logic stopped him: if he didn’t want his disappearance to be thought deliberate on his part, then he must pare down to essentials and leave the spare parts of himself behind. It must appear as if he always intended to return, not as if he deserted. Anything to obscure his betrayal. Anything to slow down a hunt.

Most of his clothes stayed, and all his schoolbooks. Photographs, framed and hung around his room, he forced himself not to touch. He took with him his wand, the locket, two outfits he deemed Muggle enough—and it was as he was digging through his closet for something other than robes that he remembered what else he must take. His fingers had trailed absently down the silken sleeves of a set of dress robes as he fell softly to his knees, then his hands, on the floor of his closet.

In the corner of his closet is a section of carpet that has been carefully ripped at the seam, its loose threads tucked under to mask any tears. Regulus pulled the carpet up. Then he did the same to the four diagonally set parquet floorboards underneath to reveal a hidden niche Regulus has kept since he was thirteen, a place to hoard all his secret treasures and treasured secrets.

In his thirteen-year-old mind, this little cavity served a grand purpose: all of Regulus’s young teenaged angst was poured into it, all the woes and injustices and loneliness, and he never had the chance to grow out of the habit. There was the lacquered box where he kept all his letters; the small silver bell he got from a Christmas cracker that used to hover and play Jingle Bells before the magic faded, gotten from the first and last Christmas Regulus was allowed to spend at Hogwarts; and the plumed white peacock quill his cousin Narcissa gave him when he was twelve, one of a pair that had been gifted to her by her fiancé.

All of this – and more – he brought with him to America, but only three of the hidden items hold vital importance: _Magick Moste Evil_ by Godelot, _Our Dark History_ by T. M. R., and _Secrets of the Darkest Art_ by Owle Bullock. These were the only books Regulus could find that reference, even obliquely, the existence of Horcruxes.

Now, Credence slides his valise onto his lap, flicks the clasps, and raises the lid. There they are, all three of them, stacked atop one another and everything else. _Magick Moste Evil_ is at the very top: a large, brown leather book that might have been innocuous if not for the chains locking it shut to keep it from screaming. Credence places it delicately on the table separating him from Tina and Newt.

Next is _Our Dark History_. It is a golden, ornately decorated book with a depiction on the cover of a dark figure, recognizably male despite being shrouded with mysterious fog, pointing his wand powerfully, theatrically, at the viewer. The figure is enclosed in a gold, ovular frame, as if it were a painting on a wall or a picture cut to fit into a locket. _Our Dark History_ is a new book, recently written and only published a year ago in early 1978. It has been translated into French, German, Spanish, Greek, and many more languages so that it is available to everyone. The book is a biography of the exploits of Dark witches and wizards throughout history (though only in Europe), a topic that has been expounded on by countless others, but this one separates itself from the rest by going backward in time, starting from most recent historical figures and proceeding to go as far back as Herpo the Foul. The first chapter is the longest, taking up sixty-nine pages of the three-hundred-page compendium; it is on Lord Voldemort. This book takes its place beside the first on the table.

Lastly is _Secrets of the Darkest Art_ , by far the most innocent looking of the three books: it is smaller than the others; the words on the cover and spine have long since faded away, leaving it a plain, pitch black; and the pages, when looked at from the side, are yellowed not only from age but from lack of use. Regulus moves to place this book with the others, but hesitates. Instead, after a moment of indecision, he lets the book fall open in his hand to a bookmarked page. He catches only a glimpse of the chapter title (“HOW TO CREATE & DESTROY—”) before he turns it around and holds it out to Tina and Newt, an offering, a confession.

He watches them read and wonders: did his face become etched with the same depth of horror when he first read how to create a Horcrux? Or is he too desensitized – dehumanized – to depravity after being steeped in the very bowels of it for so long, and of his own volition? He wants to say no.

“My name is Regulus Black.” Credence takes his time saying the words, feeling the way every word contorts his mouth into a new shape. “At least, it is now. And I am—rather, I discovered, by chance, that the Dark Lord created a Horcrux of his own. I retrieved it—” he pauses to push down the rising tide of those memories— “and I _will_ destroy it.”

“Black, you said?” asks Newt, a question layered on top of another one.

The familiar weight of his family name hangs upon Regulus’s shoulders.

“Yes,” he says; he clutches his left forearm, the one that carries his Dark Mark—an action not easily missed. Not in this age.

Newt sighs heavily. “I see.”

Tina doesn’t say anything. Not right away at least. There is a furrow between her brows and her eyes have clouded over, mind not quite present outside of her own head. She taps an index finger to her pursed lips once, twice. When she does finally speak, it is to voice a question so terrible that it had never occurred to Regulus to ask:

“And you’re sure he only made a single Horcrux?”

* * *

There are moments where he’s still in the cave,

trapped beneath the water and looking up,

up toward the surface, toward the green glow

of the basin, but it’s not green, not anymore.

It’s the silver moon he met at the bottom

of the cliffside, the sliver of a smile gone

sideways, now out of reach, thinned to a wink,

* * *

Newt: “How could anyone make more than one of these things?”

Tina, grim: “How could anyone make even one?”

* * *

Hopeless, meaningless:

to destroy a putrefied soul

with fire made from a lion’s

mane or with the pearls of acid

that hang suspended

from a snake’s cruel fangs

before they d

r

o

p

* * *

“Credence? Credence, are you alright?”

* * *

stupid

to believe he’s made of more

than silence more

than cowardice

more

more

more

when in all the words

that stitch him together

with the thick thread

of cursed veins

the only one

he has in common

with the cure

is _fiend_ —

* * *

He’s brought back to his body first: a hand on his arm.

“Regulus?”

He senses focus: Tina, crouching by his side, having gotten up when he wasn’t paying attention; Newt, still in the same spot, but it is Newt’s voice that wrapped his name in concern; the books, tucked away, hidden, for now. There is still the lingering taste of strawberries and sugar in his mouth.

“Yes,” he says. He means it to be a question, but something dull and numb inside him has robbed his face, his lips, his entire body of intonation.

Newt tops up Regulus’s cup of tea and nudges it toward him. Tina’s hand on his arm gives a gentle squeeze, prompting, and so Regulus curls his hands around it and is surprised to find, when the warmth sinks into his skin, that he’s not as numb as he thought.

“Sorry,” he says after some time has passed and he feels more himself.

“No need to apologise,” Newt says, sincere and awkward about it. He tries to top up Regulus’s tea again, though he hasn’t drunk any, and piles a small mountain of cookies by his cup. Tina pats his arm and then stands up with a few cracks and a groan.

“Not so young as I used to be,” she says, almost to herself.

“Not as old as me,” Newt says, “and still the most respected Auror of MACUSA in history.”

“Oh please.” Tina scoffs. “I’m practically history already, is what. I’m a glorified paper-pusher at this point. You see more action tending to your creatures than I do in law enforcement, nowadays.”

“You could always retire.”

“Hm.”

“Help me tend to my creatures. . . .”

“ _Hm_.”

They both laugh. Credence finds himself smiling along with them.

“You do need some help around here, though,” Tina says meaningfully.

Newt sighs. “Dear, as I have said before—”

“You were just telling me yesterday about the troubles you’ve been having trying to keep up with the nifflers, after all.” Tina’s voice is raised incrementally, only enough to drown out Newt’s.

Newt puffs up. “Why, I said no such—!”

Tina’s eyebrows lift. Meaningfully.

“Ah! Erm, I mean, yes. Those nifflers. Naughty buggers, no consideration for these old bones of mine.” Newt flexes his fingers, as if miming an ache. Then, aggressively casual, he turns to Credence. “Say, you wouldn’t happen to have an interest in magical creatures, would you, Credence?”

“I took Care of Magical Creatures as an elective.”

Newt beams. “Wonderful! And am I right in assuming that you do not plan on returning to England anytime soon?”

“No. Er—yes, you’re right.”

Newt looks to Tina, questioning, and she nods. There is a suppressed smile carving steep valleys into her face, bracketing her mouth. Credence isn’t stupid, and neither is Regulus; they can both see what’s coming next.

“Well, then.” Newt clears his throat and folds his hands together on the table. Perhaps he is trying to look professional. “Well then, I would like to ask you to become my assistant here with my little menagerie—” (“Little,” Tina says under her breath, seemingly unable to help herself.) “—of endangered and mistreated creatures.

“You will be paid, of course,” Newt hurries to say, beginning to look stressed. “And it would be a live-in, on-call position. But I would very much like—that is, Tina and I would enjoy—oh, bollocks, I mean bother—” Newt inhales very deeply— “You are wanted here, Credence.”

Newt looks to Tina once more and, when she nods at him again, he exhales and seems to slump back into his chair.

Tina reaches for Credence’s hands and squeezes them. “We would like you to stay with us, Credence, Regulus. What do you say?”

Well, there really is only one thing to say: yes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tumblr](https://dolorife.tumblr.com/)


End file.
